After finishing the book I thought Ayres rather brave, though he'd undoubtedly bristle upon reading that judgment. War Reporting for Cowards is the result, and we are lucky for it. Three are by journalists, two of those are memoirs and one is reportage, and one, by a soldier, is what I'm calling a blogmoir, a combination blog and memoir.Ĭhris Ayres became a journalist 'to meet celebrities, dine at Michelin-starred restaurants, and feel important at parties.' At first, he got his wish, and then his wish was shattered by war and his own cowardice, the cowardice that his father claims is genetic and that he claims was the reason he agreed to cover the war for the London Times: Ayres was too much of a coward to tell the editor he admired that Ayres was too much of a coward to go to war.

In this space I'll discuss four recent books that have come out of the current American war in Iraq. We're now far enough into the latest war that books written by combatants have begun to appear. Later, politicians and diplomats will hire ghostwriters to burnish their images with eight-hundred-page tomes, any ten pages of which might be used for insomnia. Immediately after any conflict, conflagration, or flood, journalists produce the first books that the public devours. NIGHT DRAWS NEAR: IRAQ'S PEOPLE IN THE SHADOW OF AMERICA'S WAR by Anthony Shadid Henry Holt and Company. MY WAR: KILLING TIME IN IRAQ by Colby Buzzell G.P Putnam's Sons. OVER THERE: FROM THE BRONX TO BAGHDAD A MEMOIR by Alan Feuer Counterpoint. WAR REPORTING FOR COWARDS by Chris Ayres Atlantic Monthly Press.

Lost in America by Colby Buzzell